Ieva Ragauskaite Phnom Penh, Cambodia @ievarag It’s been almost 2 months since selfisolation has been enforced worldwide, how are you feeling? Just in a few words, I feel good. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster and now everything is pretty much stable in the city I’m at. What have you been doing to pass your time in quarantine? In the beginning, I was very energetic because the time of quarantine started right after my holidays so I was really relaxed and full of ideas for upcoming projects. That lasted for a few weeks followed by a few weeks of absolute numbness and laziness. I took it all in as part of adapting and learning new “game rules”. But most of the time I was just creating in some sort of ways. I didn’t learn a new language, haven’t done yoga or came up with a massive business idea. But I came to terms that I haven’t done as much as I was pushing myself for and I’m fine with that! How has the situation affected your work? I was working as a graphic designer here in Cambodia so sadly I have lost this job. Small freelance projects do happen but rarely. I put on hold searching for new jobs and gigs since it seems to be a great time to focus more on illustration and challenge myself in this field.
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Do you have a day-to-day lockdown routine? Kinda. My routine changed since I have no work anymore so I feel like sometimes I let myself go. But pretty much every day I wake up and make myself an espresso and write into my journal and after that, I try to work. I say “try” because in the past weeks I had no motivation to do it and I just spend a lot of time reading and in the evening riding my bike around the city (since Cambodia never had strict lockdown rules). I made a lot of space in my everyday life for video calls/chats which to be honest I love! Have any unexpected benefits come out of this situation for you? What do you wish for the future? For sure. Even before lockdown, I spent the majority of my time at home alone but now I had to really spend time alone and it gave me some sort of empowerment. It’s just me and my thoughts. That being said there was plenty of time to think (and overthink) and plan a little bit where I wanna head next, what I wanna do with my life after all this craziness goes down. For me, this time was very self-centred and even therapeutic. Where can we buy your art? You can get my art at FY! (www.iamfy.co/shop/ieva-ragauskaite) since I can’t ship any orders myself at the moment but I always appreciate people who contact me and orders from me directly.
